The link to the gang’s forum, as always is:

http://www.steventrevino.net/yabb/

Love,
Steven

Fellow Owners,

With NFL training camps around the corner, the fantasy season can’t be too far behind. With this in mind, Steve and I have created the leagues for next year and have prepared something to guide you through next season.

Here is a list of both leagues and their draft type:

Auction Draft League (The Gang’s League 1):

• David U
• Michael F
• Max D
• Andrew Fo (League Manager)
• Steven T
• T
• Nick S
• David W
• Corey E
• T-Rav

Standard Draft League (The Gang’s League 2) :

• Nick G
• John Fo
• Matt D
• Brad D
• Nate L
• Lauren B
• Megan W
• Sticky R
• Kurt M (League Manager)
• Bob Exline

The Essentials a.k.a Things You Have to Know/Do

1) CHECK If YOUR DRAFT DATE WORKS!

Andrew’s auction league [TGL1] drafts Aug 10 @ 7:00 pm ET (6:00 CST).
Kurt’s draft league [TGL 2] drafts TBD Aug 17 @ 7:30 pm ET (6:30 CST).

Check your schedule, ask off from work, whatever, but get off for this date, as this is something we can’t do for you. If these dates irrevocably conflict with your schedule, tell me or Steve ASAP.  I can not overstate how important it is for you to clear this date or tell us quickly so we can find a better one early on.

2) Make sure you have computer access with a decent internet connection on this day.  This may seem basic, but inevitably there is someone who tells us last minute that they won’t have a computer on this date.  Find a computer or talk to Steve or I ASAP so we can plan on finding you one.

3) Make sure your computer can run the draft software.  Check your computer here, regardless of it worked last year.  Browsers and systems change and the check only takes a couple minutes.  If it doesn’t work, once again, get with me or Steve as soon as you can and we can try to fix the problem.

OK, those are the must-do’s by draft day.  Check on those things quickly.

Highly Suggested Things To Do

1) Participate in a mock draft at ESPN.  A mock draft is a draft that does not end up creating a league that you will play in.  Ultimately, it is a practice draft.  I suggest doing just so you can be familiar with the software, as you will have to make quick decisions when we do this for real.

2) Take a look around and read a little.  A lot of things happen and some of it goes unnoticed.  Read Fantasy websites and see what’s being talked about.  Basically, become familiar with what’s going on.  There are endless ways to do this, including the popular sites ESPN, CBS, FOX, and Yahoo!.

3) Become familiar with our rules and scoring system.  You can find our scoring system here, or by going to the setting tab when you’re logged in.  It helps to be familiar with how things will be scored when thinking about who you want to draft.

If you need to get a hold of Steve or I, please send us a message via facebook or reply by email.

Thanks,

Steve and Andrew

1. Move blog to blog.steventrevino.net. I will be blogging less often, but more personal.
2. Main index page will aggregate several things: Twitter status, Google Reader shared links, recent blog posts, recent forum posts(not likely, as I like it more private). And probably “About Me.”
3. Upgrade forums. It’s still functional, but it always goes on the list. Fixes a lot of the old problems like PM storage.
4. Upgrade blog. Wordpress 2.7 is expected in about 2 weeks and I’d like to make the change. I also want to see if I can design it around a child theme. Because I will be making an index page from scratch, there will probably be yet another redesign. I’m thinking blue.
5. Find a domain hack. It will redirect to this page, but who wouldn’t like a simpler web address?

For those of you on Twitter, I’m looking for some more people to follow. You can follow me and find my updates here.

Update: The offer has expired. Send me thanks via comments to those who got their posters!

Amazon is offering a free poster from their partnership with Universal Music Enterprise. Your choice from: The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Bob Marley, Kiss, or Marvin Gaye.

If you don’t trust that ad, it is linked from this Amazon page. I’ve got The Who, now get yourself one. Ends Sunday, November 9th, 2008.

I decided to add some Gmail Labs features after reading about the new Calendar and Docs gadgets [Gmail Blog], and I noticed that G-Labs is now offering web-based SMS. I have used some free messaging software on the web (no SMS plan), but I was turned off by the ads and lack of security they seemed to permeate. Now when I select someone to chat, I get a “Switch to SMS” which pulls the mobile numbers from My Contacts or asks you to enter numbers, which gets saved to My Contacts. Pretty neat.

My only issue is the “(name) may be charged for an SMS by their mobile carrier each time you hit enter” message that appears above the chatbox. If you have a texting plan, you should be able to send/receive messages via Gmail Chat within your limits. If not, the rate seems to be between 10-15 cents per message. I don’t need to be told that everytime, but Google has that responsibility.

Out of curiosity, I went ahead and sent myself a text message (shown right). I got two messages sent back, as I expected. The first one was:

FWD: (email) sent you an SMS from Gmail. You can send a reply to this msg, or send STOP to opt out, HELP for more info.

The second one read:

FWD: Gmail – (email): Steven, you are…

An interesting thing is that it didn’t come from some foreign 20-digit number or a 5-digit shortcode [wiki] but from the 406 area code, which happens to be Montana. I doubt that this number is permanently related to my Gmail account, but who knows what the future will bring. The future has told me two things: 406 spells “G0O” and that my 406 number is permanent. Here is news from the Gmail blog.

If you do not see this option yet, Gmail tends to roll out Labs features to groups at a time. Make sure your “Gmail display language” is set to “English (US)” in Settings. This feature is only available for phones in the US, but everyone can send texts to US phones.

iPhone users: Get Google talk here and enjoy G-Chat.
Android users: I’m jealous.

11/3/08 Update: The Gmail Blog posted Friday that there were some glitches in the SMS messaging feature, so they have decided to pull the service for about two weeks. I know that I did not receive the the response sent to my 406 number and perhaps these bugs are to blame.

12/11/08 Update: The feature has rolled back out and this post has been edited. Thanks, Google!

If you are having problems accessing the forums using the navbar above, please clear your cache. This is due to a site-caching plugin I am using in order to make pages load faster. While the forums are now disabled in the plugin, they might still be cached on your browsers.

For IE: Hold the Control key, and click the Refresh button on the toolbar.
For Firefox: Hold down the Control key, the Shift key, and press R.
Macs and others may follow the lengthier instructions here.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

• Javascript loading speed is now 40x faster
• Geolocation abilities
• Ctrl+Tab for navagating tabs
• Speed Dial
• Privacy Mode
• Keyword Filters 

I’m excited about the keyword filters. I love smart keywords as it is, but now the “awesome bar” is even awesomer. You now have filter key words to find that buried site. Search history by typing “^”, bookmarks with “*”, tagged pages with “+”, only urls with “@”, and for title/tags only use “#”.

Don’t care about keywords? Go ahead and just download it. You could also wait until the offical release near the end of the year, but why not get your Christmas present early? I am.

Direct Download Firefox 3.1b English (US):  Windows | Mac OS X | Linux